الفهرس 
Aim of the workOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Hepatic encephalopathy (HE) is a severe complication of
cirrhosis. Minimal hepatic encephalopathy (MHE) is a neuropsychiatric
and cognitive syndrome caused by liver diseases and accompanying
damage to the CNS.
Patients with MHE have no recognisable clinical symptoms of
HE but have only mild cognitive and psychomotor deficits. Many
diagnostic techniques including psychometric tests,
electroencephalogram and evoked potentials (EP) have been used to
detect MHE. Among these tests, only psychometric tests can be easily
done in epidemiological studies. The symbol digit test (SDT) and
number connection test part A (NCT-A) were reported to have the
advantages of simplicity and reliability
The use of non-invasive tests for diagnosis of different clinical
conditions has gained a great interest recently. Thus, markers of
neuronal or astrocyte cell injury may be valuable for the diagnosis of
HE.
Neurofilament light chain is a neuron-specific biomarker with
prognostic ability in several types of central nervous system injuries.
The aim of this study was to assess the role of neurofilament light
chains in detection and diagnosis of minimal hepatic encephalopathy in
patients with liver cirrhosis.
Study approval was taken and informed written consent was
taken from all participants with full explanation of study procedure.
The current study included 150 participants within three study
groups; group I (included 50 cirrhotic patients with minimal hepatic encephalopathy), group II (included 50 cirrhotic patients without
minimal hepatic encephalopathy) and group III (included 50 healthy
volunteers as a control group). The current study was conducted at
inpatient and outpatient clinic of Tropical Medicine, Menoufia
University Hospital in the period from August 2022 to August 2023.
minimal hepatic encephalopathy was diagnosed using the
Psychometric Hepatic Encephalopathy Score (PHES).
All patients were subjected to careful history taking, thorough
clinical examination and laboratory investigation with measurement of
neurofilament light chains was measured by ELISA.
Pelvi-abdominal ultrasound for assessment of liver, spleen and
degree of ascites if found. The degree of cirrhosis was measured by
calculating Child-Pugh score, MELD score and MELD Na score.